Medieval and Renaissance

Medieval and Renaissance

The museum’s intimate collection of 14th- through mid 16th-century Italian tempera and oil on panel paintings and furniture features numerous works gifted by founder Anna Rice Cooke during the museum's early years and the Kress Foundation in 1961. The latter donation came as part of the distribution of Samuel H. Kress’s remarkable collection of European old master paintings to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as well as collections such as the Honolulu Museum of Art’s in regions where Kress five-and-dime stores served the public. Highlights include a serene depiction of St. John the Evangelist with an asp writhing on the rim of a chalice, rendered by Piero di Cosimo around 1504-1506, as well as a psychologically vibrant portrait of a man of 1553 by Giovanni Battista Moroni, one of the few Italian artists to specialize in likenesses during this period of humanist interest in the individual. The Italian High Renaissance is present in masterworks by Piero di Cosimo and Pintoricchio, while its Northern counterpart is at hand in the work of Aelbrecht Bouts and Albrecht Dürer.